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EJToday: Top Headlines

EJToday is SEJ's selection of new and outstanding stories on environmental topics in print and on the air, updated every weekday. SEJ also offers a free e-mailed digest of the day's EJToday postings, called SEJ-beat. SEJ members are subscribed automatically, but may opt out here. Non-members may subscribe here. EJToday is also available via RSS feed. Please see Editorial Guidelines for EJToday content.

"Confronted with images of corpses floating in the blackened floodwaters or baking in the sun on abandoned highways, there aren't too many people left who see what happened following Hurricane Katrina as a purely 'natural' disaster. The dominant narratives that have emerged, in the four years since the storm, are of a gross human tragedy, compounded by social inequities and government ineptitude—a crisis subsequently exploited in every way possible for political and financial gain."

"DIRGIN, Texas -- Ida Finley smiles wistfully, recalling how she used to cook for an entire East Texas community -- nearly all descendants of slaves. The children would grab cornbread, greens and cookies from her kitchen while their parents grew vegetables in a tiny creekside village hidden among pine forests."

"WASHINGTON, DC -- Environmental advocates delivered a report on the climate effects of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline to President Barack Obama today, with the intention of giving the President all the information he needs to reject the pipeline."

"Abnormally dry conditions and pockets of moderate drought have spread over parts of the U.S. Midwest in the past week, including in the key crop state of Iowa, according to a report issued on Thursday."

"No one understands risk better than the insurance industry — except, perhaps, the reinsurance industry, the companies that sell insurance to insurers, which also need protection from risk exposure. As the risk managers for the risk managers, reinsurers follow climate change obsessively. A great deal of money is at stake. ..."

"Gov. Rick Scott on Wednesday pledged $90 million for a new bridge along historic Tamiami Trail, a project that promises to restore natural water flow to part of the Everglades and ease -- at least eventually -- unnatural Lake Okeechobee releases now fouling two coastal rivers."

"Federal authorities are struggling to explain why 600 people in 22 states have fallen ill from a foodborne parasite rarely seen in the United States. But some officials are ready to finger one culprit that has hindered their investigation: the sequester."

"RALEIGH -- North Carolina landowners would be forced to sell the natural gas under their homes and farms -- whether they want to or not -- under a fracking recommendation approved Wednesday that’s expected to be enacted by the state legislature this fall."

"After 60 years of car-worship, Americans in virtually every state are driving less, according to a new report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Over the past eight years, the number of vehicle miles traveled has steadily decreased, a trend dominated by the so-called millennial generation’s much lower driving rates."

"There's a heated debate over the use of antibiotics in farm animals. Critics say farmers overuse these drugs; farmers say they don't. It's hard to resolve the argument, in part because no one knows exactly how farmers use antibiotics."

"A major feature of the Earth has escaped notice — until now. Scientists Thursday that they've discovered a vast canyon, twice as long as the Grand Canyon. It carves a deep scar from the center of the world's largest island out to the coast. And, oh one more detail: It's buried beneath as much as 2 miles of ice. Yes, we're talking about icy Greenland."

"Scientists probing the mystery of the so-called 'global warming hiatus' may have made a breakthrough. According to a new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, a persistent area of unusually cool sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean could explain why, despite ever-increasing amounts of manmade greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, global average surface temperatures have increased at a slower rate during the past 15 years."

"DILLINGHAM, Alaska — President Barack Obama’s top environmental official was visibly moved as people in this fishing town told her the giant Pebble Mine would kill wild salmon and destroy their culture."